LOS ANGELES — Let’s get some things straight. It’s late as I write this. And maybe you’ve had a sleepless night when you read this.

But there are some things we should agree on. Yes, the Nuggets lost Game 1. Yes, they had the lead for most of the game. Yes, the Nuggets are a team well past moral victories at this point. And yes, the Nuggets have lost 11 consecutive playoff games, over many years, to the Lakers.

But these Nuggets are for real. These Nuggets, in fact, are not like any Nuggets team you’ve seen recently, or maybe ever.

So, given what we agree on, what do we make of the Nuggets’ 105-103 loss to the Lakers in Game 1 of a best-of-seven series?

Well, it depends entirely on your world view — or your ability to make free throws, which the Nuggets could do only occasionally.

The Nuggets played even with the Lakers, and maybe better than the Lakers, certainly (until the end) tougher than the Lakers, and, for much of the game, as big as the much bigger Lakers. Have you ever seen any Nuggets team play this hard?

But then they lost to the Lakers, who had too much Kobe Bryant, even if the Nuggets had a lot of Carmelo Anthony, who might have gotten his own slot on “American Idol,” which was playing — because it’s L.A. — right across the street.

So, either the Nuggets played very tough in a road game in a place where the Lakers rarely lose.

Or they threw away a chance to steal a game from the Lakers, who had spent much of the postseason embarrassing themselves, needing seven games to eliminate a hobbled Houston Rockets team just to get this far.

Or both.

It really matters less what we might think than how the Nuggets see it. And we’ll probably have a better idea after Game 2 on Thursday.

If you watched the game Tuesday, you were sure, for about 40-plus minutes, that you had seen the world change before your eyes. The Nuggets — the same Nuggets you’ve been following for so many years — were about to throw down the Lakers and toss away a franchise’s worth of bad karma, and then, well, they didn’t.

The guys on ESPN weren’t much help in explaining it. I was there, and I have no idea.

George Karl was asked about it, and he said, “I’m not really going to analyze.”

In Lakerland, they see it as a gut check, winning against a team they’re used to beating.

For the Nuggets, the game was in the balance until Anthony Carter’s in-bounds pass — known in the trade as a lollipop — was stolen by Trevor Ariza. And somebody sitting near me joked that the market-driven boys down at ABC-TV (which will televise the NBA finals) must have drawn up the play.

It’s an L.A. story. Certainly, you come here and it’s different. We can begin with the very ground itself, which yielded yet another earthquake a few hours before the game. It wasn’t a large earthquake, but it was large enough to rattle the senses. And if you don’t think that’s an omen, then you’re not a real sports fan.

There was mayhem, of course, this being Los Angeles, and not just in the “American Idol” cast line across the street. On the front page of the L.A. Times was a story about a rapper being shot down in a Beverly Hills mall parking lot.

There was the unlikely. As I walked out to my seat before the game, they began playing the national anthem. And I swear, one of the four singers in the a capella group was Dick Van Dyke. I’m serious. The Dick Van Dyke. And, no, I can’t explain it. And neither can George Karl, who was busy trying to keep his sight lines open around Jack Nicholson. And yes that was Spike Lee on the front row, presumably scouting Melo for his next biopic.

But look, this was a night the Nuggets were taking on all comers. You know the story by now of the steel cage match between Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke and World Wrestling Entertainment’s Vince McMahon, who, if he were a Nugget, would be a cross between Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith.

There’s a scheduling conflict: Do the Nuggets play Monday in Game 4 of the playoffs or do we watch Monday Night Raw? It doesn’t seem like a close call. I mean, the Nuggets haven’t made the Western Finals in a generation. And how long since you’ve been raw on a Monday night?

And yet, here’s your war of words:

Silent Stan Kroenke says: “. . .”

And McMahon runs to every microphone he can, hyping the battle, and tells ESPN: “Quite frankly, it’s my view that Stan Kroenke should be arrested, should be arrested for impersonating a good businessman, because he’s not a good businessman.”

I don’t know.

What I do know is that if I’m looking for a real smackdown, I’ll take Melo vs. Kobe.

Mike Littwin typically writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but he’s on special assignment covering the Nuggets-Lakers series. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.

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